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Life Imitates a Drew Barrymore Movie: Michelle Philpotts of Spalding, England, and her husband, Ian, and their two children have adjusted, since a car crash some 20 years ago, to her anterograde amnesia, which, every day, robs her of short-term memory, forcing her to constantly re-learn her life. According to a June profile in London's Daily Mail, that includes Ian's convincing her that the stranger in her bed every morning is her husband, which he does by showing her their wedding photographs. [Daily Mail]

A National Geographic TV special tracked "Silvano," an Italian man for whom sleep is almost impossible. He has "fatal familial insomnia," making him constantly exhausted, and doctors believe he will eventually fall into a fatal dementia. Only 40 families in the world are believed to carry the FFI gene.

Police in Hyderabad, Pakistan, recently arrested a doctor for the increasingly suspect crime of insulting Islam -- after he merely tossed away the business card of a man who happened to have the last name "Muhammad." According to a December Associated Press dispatch, "dozens" of Pakistanis are sentenced to death each year for such tangential references to the holy name of Muhammad, but the government fears that trying to repeal the law might incite Muslim extremism. [San Francisco Chronicle-AP]